L:eadership and Some Life Lessons

• For Monday, Davidson, ch. 7.  
• Start thinking about which two committees you want to simulate.
• If you have not already turned in your writeup, think about the differences between congressional leadership and leadership in other contexts (esp. if you are in the leadership sequence)

What is leadership?  What is power?

• Transactional v. transformative
• Sources of power
• Knowledge of policy and procedure
• Understanding of what followers want
• Money
• Reputation:  fear and respect
• Influence on public opinion

A PS to McCarthy's fall: change in the MTV

So why did Kevin McCarthy fail? Michael Tomasky:

McCarthy’s pulverizing failure as a legislative leader stems from two truths: One, he cared little about policy; two, his word was no good. He’d say anything to anyone. If you’ve read enough political biographies, you know that “he was always as good as his word” is a common form of high praise that can be delivered across partisan lines. McCarthy was as useless and malleable as his word.

Lesson: Pols understand that they often mislead voters, but it is taboo to lie to fellow pols.

Narrow majorities require high levels of unity.

A vote from yesterday shows that procedural control can be precarious. 

Boehner: 

• "Pelosi had gutted Big John Dingell like a halibut she found floating around San Francisco Bay, then calmly sat back and had a cup of coffee afterward. His entrails were left on display for everyone in the House of Representatives to see- and to remember."
• The Mark Meadows story: "Yeah, I said, I'd forgive him. But I knew he was carrying a backpack full of knives-and sooner or later, he'd try to cut me again with them. Which, of course, he did.
• How did Boehner lead the fight against the House Bank?  (He had help.)
• How did Bachmann turn the tables?

Barber Conable, a moderate Republican from upstate New York, retired in 1984, and wrote a column reflecting on life in the House. Instead of looking at the upstarts with horror, he instead saw something very natural:

Old as I am, I recall being a "young turk" at one point and participating noisily in a successful effort to change House rules which the then Establishment found adequate. I learned a lot about the institution from the effort, vented my frustrations, and gradually became part of the Establishment myself. Youth presses age, provides a good deal of the dynamic and the dialogue, and eventually ages. Partisans may not like the tranquility of my view of these recent histrionics, but I find reassurance in the cycle of renewal.

Boehner on quitting (fall 2015):

LBJ AND LEGISLATIVE LEADERSHIP

The Johnson Network

• The Favor Bank

The Johnson Intelligence System

• One week after becoming president, LBJ mentions his long relationship with J. Edgar Hoover (ab at 19:00).

The Johnson Procedure

• Unanimous consent agreement -- functional equivalent of a House rule

The Johnson Treatment

• Caro on LBJ, the House, and the Senate

LBJ in Frank Underwood's office

 

The inside game and the outside game:  in LBJ's time in the Senate, the outside game scarcely counted.  

Gingrich and C-SPAN start to change things. 

• Newt v. O'Neill 1984 (start clip at 9:30)

Parties and Leaders

  Americans hate Congress but like their own Members.

For Wednesday, we shall discuss the history of parties and leadership.  Carefully read the Boehner excerpt on Canvas.

Hill leadership

• House
• Senate

Leadership Activities

• Legislation
• Whips and for real (Scalise is now majority leader)
• Communication:  Johnson and Thune
• Campaign Activity; Hill Committees 
• Literally "paying your dues"

Edmund Burke:

 In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects!

Speakership elections 

McCarthy concessions (Davidson, print ed., 144-146).

More on Wednesday about McCarthy's skill set.

After compromising with Democrats, McCarthy fell to MTV change that he had accepted.

And then came Mike Johnson

• Is party unity the same as party discipline? 
• The Cheney vote

Member Organizations

• Congressional Black Caucus
• Links to Off-Hill organizations: the CBC Foundation

Informal Groups

• House Freedom Caucus
• The Squad

Home Style and Hill Style

PRESENTATION ON DC PROGRAM

IN WRITEUPS, EXPLAIN THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU LEARNED ABOUT CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS

For Monday, Davidson, ch. 6

The House

Overview  -- the game

Gerrymandering: cracking, packing, merging, isolating

World War G in 2025-2026!

The gerrymander game

Race and education:  the four quadrants

Crossover districts

The Senate

Senate classes (2024 was a "class 1" election)

The vanishing of split delegations.  The 119th has just three:

1. Maine:  Collins (R) and King (I)
2. Wisconsin: Johnson (R) and Baldwin (D)
3. Pennsylvania: Fetterman (D) and McCormick (R)

Campaign Finance

"Hard money" contribution limits

Outside spending

 A local emergency and a national story:

In their home style (Davidson, 127-129 of paper ed. ), members try to convey

• Qualification
• Identification
• Empathy

Every single member has both a Hill style and a home style.

Take our own House member, Rep. Judy Chu

John McCain in 1993 showed that a fierce maverick can become very deferential when facing little old ladies:

 

AOC-DC questions Michael Cohen:



Consider the characteristics of NY 14 as AOC goes local:

AOC District Office

d

During non-pandemic times, different kinds of encounters take place at town halls:

 

Town halls can sometimes get testy. This week, for instance:

US Style -- one measure

Highest Percentage from Small Donors in the 2024 cycle

• Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): 72.6% ($5.76 million)
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): 69.9% ($10.60 million)
• Bernie Sanders (I-VT): 63.6% ($22.73 million)
• Jim Jordan (R-OH): 55.7% ($7.42 million)
• Eli Crane (R-AZ): 54.9% ($4.63 million)

For detailed breakdowns of individual candidate records, you can search for specific members on the OpenSecrets Large vs. Small Donations tracker.

Congressional Elections

Questions on the assignment?

Presentation Wednesday on the CMC Washington Program 

For Wednesday, Davidson ch. 5

Competition

Incumbents Usually Win -- House and Senate

House and Senate margins  

Control

Midterms Are Bad for the President's Party

Since 1994:  control is in play, majorities are usually narrow.

In 2024, GOP won the aggregate popular vote for the House.

The historical pattern:

Turnout

Demographics:  Rock the Vote in 2018 and 2020

Always lower in midterms.  Why?

The House

Overview  -- the game

Gerrymandering: cracking, packing, merging, isolating

World War G in 2025-2026!

The gerrymander game

Race and education:  the four quadrants

Crossover districts

The Senate

Senate classes (last year was a "class 1" election)

The vanishing of split delegations.  The 119th has just three:

1. Maine:  Collins (R) and King (I)
2. Wisconsin: Johnson (R) and Baldwin (D)
3. Pennsylvania: Fetterman (D) and McCormick (R)

Campaign Finance

"Hard money" contribution limits

Outside spending

First Assignment, Spring 2026

Answer one of the following two options:

Option 1

Chapter 3 of the Davidson book begins with a short vignette about Rep. Derek Tran to introduce its core themes of ambition and recruitment. Write a replacement opening vignette featuring a different House member who won a first term in the 2024 election. In your vignette:

• Identify one specific decision point in this member’s path to office (e.g., whether and when to run at all, which seat to pursue).
• Tell why you chose this particular member, and how this case highlights something that Tran’s vignette does not.
• Analyze how this member’s experience illustrates or complicates arguments in the sections “Becoming a Candidate” and “Nominating Politics,” citing at least two specific passages from the book. This part is most important.
• Briefly note one fact or episode you encountered in your research that would not typically appear in a textbook vignette but sheds light on this member’s recruitment or nomination. 

Do not simply summarize the member’s biography or election results. Your job is to write something the authors could plausibly adopt, and to explain why.

Option 2

Choose one current congressional leader (Johnson, Jeffries, Thune, or Schumer) and write a postscript to Chapter 6 of the Davidson book. Your postscript should:

• Identify one specific moment since January 2025 when this leader faced a choice that tested party unity, procedural control, or bargaining leverage.
• Quote and cite at least two specific passages from the chapter that are most relevant to that moment.
• Explain how the leader’s behavior confirms, complicates, or contradicts the theory of conditional party government.  This part is most important.

Use at least three primary sources (e.g., floor statements, press releases, leadership letters, official transcripts).  In a short concluding paragraph, quote one sentence from Chapter 6 that the authors might revise if they were writing the next edition. Justify your choice.

Essays should reflect an understanding of class readings and discussions. Many resources, including CQ Magazine are at Library/Databases/CQ Library.  You must consult other sources as well. See, among others: 

• Congress.gov
• Vital Statistics on Congress
• Congressional Research Service
• Pew Research Center data on Congress
• House
• Senate
• Biog Directory of US Congress 1774- present
• C-SPAN
• Census Reporter [to find a profile of a House district, enter "Congressional District" and then the number.  For instance: Congressional District 28 CA.

Read Strunk & White and my stylesheet (with links to model papers).

Watch my writing lecture.

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than three pages long. I will not read past the third page. 
• Please submit all papers in this course as Word documents, not Google docs or pdfs.
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style.  Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space.
• Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism and will result in severe consequences
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Canvas dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Friday, February 13. (If you have trouble with Canvas, simply email me the paper as an attached file.)  I reserve the right to dock papers one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.